Justice Committee
Meeting date: Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Official Report
447KB pdf
Subordinate Legislation
Act of Sederunt (Contempt of Court in Civil Proceedings) 2011 (SSI 2011/388)
The instrument is not subject to any parliamentary procedure. Members will recall that we considered it at our meeting on 29 November and that, given the drafting concerns that the Subordinate Legislation Committee had raised, we agreed to come back to it at a future meeting. We have a paper on the instrument, which is paper 2.
I suggest that we have two main options: to note the instrument and take no further formal action—we may want to do that if we are sufficiently assured that there are on-going discussions between Subordinate Legislation Committee officials and the Lord President’s private office—or to write to the Lord President to note and echo the concerns that the Subordinate Legislation Committee expressed about the drafting of the instrument. In doing the latter, we would welcome the on-going discussions with the Lord President’s private office on drafting practice. I ask for members’ views.
It is clear from the paper that discussions and dialogue are on-going and there has been a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing, so I am not sure what further role this committee can have. I do not know whether we can keep an eye on how the discussions are going.
The options are simply to note the instrument and do nothing else or to note it and write to the Lord President.
The clerk has drawn to my attention the quality of the instruments that come before us, as quite a few of them have issues relating to them. We might want to draw attention to that. It is on the record that we are concerned by the quality of the instruments, but our options for the instrument that we are considering today are to write to the Lord President and echo the concerns that have been expressed, or simply to note the instrument and take no further action.
I think that we should write.
I agree. I think that we should put down a marker and say that we are going to be more proactive about the quality of instruments.
I agree.
I agree.
Thank you. I suspend the meeting for a moment to allow the witnesses to take their seats.
10:34
Meeting suspended.
10:35
On resuming—